JBS USA pays $11m ransom to hackers
By Dan Moore
09:11, 10 June 2021
JBS, the largest meat packing firm in the world, has paid cyber criminals £7.8m ($11m) in ransom following a prolonged period of hacking that was damaging the company’s business.
The US wing of the firm revealed it felt compelled to hand over the ransom, in the form of bitcoins to end a series of attacks on its computer networks back in May.
Widespread hacks
The meatpacker experienced significant problems to its US, Canadian and Australian operations, which were temporarily shut down, and was only back up and running after it agreed to pay the $11m ransom.
In a statement JBS USA revealed it agreed to make the payment following consultation with its in-house IT professionals and external cybersecurity experts in order to mitigate any unforeseen issues related to the cyberattacks and to ensure no data was lost.
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High price of cyber crime
JBS says it spends $200m annually on IT, and employs more than 850 IT specialists worldwide. The company quoted the FBI’s view that that the latest round of attacks is the work of “one of the most specialised and sophisticated cybercriminal groups in the world”.
The attack on JBS coincided with the attack on the Colonial Pipeline, which saw the oil line out of action for several days, affecting almost half of the east coast of the USA.
As with the JBS attack, the culprits are believed to be a group calling itself DarkSide. Colonial Pipeline paid over $4.4m in bitcoin to the gang.
No data compromised
The meatpacker confirmed that it was able to resolve problems stemming from the attack due to its cybersecurity protocols, redundant systems and encrypted backup servers. Investigations are proceeding but JBS confirmed that no company, customer or employee data was compromised.
Commenting on the cyberattack, Andre Nogueira, CEO of JBS USA said: “This was a very difficult decision to make for our company and for me personally.
“However, we felt this decision had to be made to prevent any potential risk for our customers.”
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